What if grace isn’t something you deserve, or even understand—but something that finds you in the middle of your restless, stumbling search for meaning?
Did Faust accidentally find grace?
That’s one of the most provocative and mysterious questions at the heart of Faust. Here's a way to unpack it:
In Faust Part II, despite making a pact with Mephistopheles and engaging in a life of ambition, desire, and sometimes destruction, Faust is ultimately saved—not because of his morality or religious orthodoxy, but because of his unceasing striving. Goethe suggests that the human soul’s honest yearning—even when it errs—can be met by grace.
It’s a radical, almost scandalous vision of salvation. Faust doesn't earn grace. He doesn’t even ask for it. He just refuses to give up the quest for meaning. That’s what makes his redemption both accidental and inevitable in Goethe’s cosmos. It's grace that meets striving, not striving that discovers grace.
------------
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stands as a profound voice for our digital age, offering a vision where the inner life and external world can be reconciled despite rapid technological change.
• Born in 1749, Goethe was a German polymath whose influence on Western literature and thought remains significant
• His concept of "world literature" anticipated globalization's cultural exchange
• "The Sorrows of Young Werther" became an international sensation, establishing Goethe as a literary star
• Youth coming-of-age stories represent the struggle to find meaning in a rapidly changing world
• The real coming-of-age story involves reconciling inner longings with external circumstances
• The "Storm and Stress" movement championed emotion over enlightenment rationality
• Goethe's "Faust" explores midlife crisis and the emptiness of pursuing knowledge without meaning
• Part One of Faust shows the bankruptcy of pursuing power and knowledge as life's ultimate goal
• Part Two of Faust presents a redemptive vision often overlooked by modern readers
• The inner desire for meaning, love, connection, and transcendence remains constant across generations
• Contemporary coming-of-age experiences accelerate with each passing decade due to technological change
• Goethe's work bridges the gap between scientific rationalism and spiritual transcendence
If you found this meaningful, please leave a five-star review, subscribe, and share with anyone who might resonate with this conversation.
Contact: subversiveorthodoxy@gmail.com
Instagram: @subversiveorthodoxy
Host: Travis Mullen Instagram: @manartnation
Co-Host: Robert L. Inchausti, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is the author of numerous books, including Subversive Orthodoxy, Thomas Merton's American Prophecy, The Spitwad Sutras, and Breaking the Cultural Trance. He is, among other things, a Thomas Merton authority, and editor of the Merton books Echoing Silence, Seeds, and The Pocket Thomas Merton. He's a lover of the literature of those who challenge the status quo in various ways, thus, he has had a lifelong fascination with the Beats.
Book by Robert L. Inchausti "Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise" Published 2005, authorization by the author.
Intro & Outro Music by Noah Johnson & Chavez the Fisherman, all rights reserved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
the real coming of age story that Gerta told about.
How do you come to grips with aworld that doesn't even
acknowledge your inner life oryour desire for the transcendent
?
That's the real question.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
That's so relevant now because I feel like the
coming of age from 10 years to10 years now is rapidly
accelerating.
Social media, digital media, aiand all that.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, just from my age I'm in my forties to a 20
year old, right now, my son's 18.
Our worlds are completelydifferent in how they're paced
and how people relate.
So to write, to write somethingnow or just, not even just for
literature, but just for thesake of understanding your
culture now, with 10 yeariterations, is insane compared
(00:47):
to their generations, was youknow, probably things were
changing a lot over 50 years.
That's right, and now thingsare changing a lot over two to
five years.
I don't know what to do withthat.
Well well how Gerhe speaks intothat.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Well, the good news is, the inner life isn't really
changed.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, there's still the desire for meaning, love,
connection, community, God.
All those transcendent desiresare as fresh with every
generation.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Welcome to the Subversive Orthodoxy Podcast.
I'm your host, travis Mullen,and I'm excited to have you with
us.
This is a podcast aboutphilosophy and meaning.
It is about how we as humanswithstand the challenges of our
cultures.
It is about the generalJudeo-Christian revelation of
God in the world and how thebloodiest century ever recorded
(01:55):
couldn't kill that revelation.
It's also about how thatrevelation, tossed aside as
archaic, outdated and obsolete,may be the very life-giving
power we need to resist thisdistracted techno state we're
living in full of anxiety,depression and teenage suicide.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
It's great entertainment, thrilling
entertainment.
It's the inside story, packedwith drama, today.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Today we're diving into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
and, as a disclaimer, right fromthe outset, I do not know
German, I do not know how topronounce German, so bear with
me on a few words here.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wasborn in 1749 and died in 1832.
He was a german polymath, apoet, playwright, novelist,
(03:12):
scientist and statesman whoseinfluence on western thought and
literature is profound.
Born in frankfurt, germany, hedisplayed early brilliance in
literature and the naturalsciences, later becoming a
central figure in the Germanstorm and drawn which I did not
know how to pronounce storm andstress, movement which rebelled
(03:34):
against enlightenment,rationalism, in favor of intense
emotion and individuality.
His sorrows his book thesorrows of young Werther 17,
made him an internationalliterary sensation, while his
magnum opus, faust, remains oneof the most celebrated works in
world literature.
Goethe's intellectual pursuitsextended beyond literature.
(03:56):
He engaged deeply withphilosophy, optics and natural
sciences, often challengingprevailing scientific and
theological assumptions.
Sciences often challengingprevailing scientific and
theological assumptions.
His concept of world literatureanticipated globalization's
cultural exchange and hisholistic approach to knowledge
placed him at odds with rigidenlightenment and parasism, and
(04:17):
later romantic escapism.
In his book SubversiveOrthodoxy, professor Enchasti
positions Goethe alongsidefigures like William Blake, both
of whom challenged the forcesof religious dogmatism and
secular materialism.
Like Blake, goethe resisted aworld reduced to mechanistic
rationality, while alsocritiquing the rigid moralism of
(04:39):
institutional religion.
Instead, he sought a poetic andphilosophical vision that
embraced paradox, integratingthe sciences with the mystical,
the rational with the mythic.
(05:01):
His book Faust, for instance,critiques both modern hubris and
medieval superstition,ultimately affirming redemption
beyond human striving.
Nietzsche admired Faust becauseit dramatized the modern human
condition, the relentlesspursuit of knowledge, experience
and power, yet the ultimateneed for something transcendent.
Faust's dissatisfaction mirrorsNietzsche's idea of Übermensch,
the Superman, pushing beyondconventional morality and
(05:21):
embracing the tragic beauty ofexistence.
Beyond conventional moralityand embracing the tragic beauty
of existence.
However, goethe's visiondiverges from Nietzsche's in
that Faust finds grace,suggesting that striving alone
is insufficient without divineintervention.
Goethe's influence remainsembedded in the American
worldview, particularly in thecultural ideal of self-creation
(05:42):
and the pursuit of experience.
In the cultural ideal ofself-creation and the pursuit of
experience, his Faustianarchetype lives on in the
Silicon Valley's innovators,political leaders and artists
who chase progress, often at agreat personal cost.
His belief in world literatureechoes in America's global
cultural and intellectualexchanges, and his insistence on
an integrated vision, one thatrefuses to separate science from
(06:05):
art, reason from faithcontinues to challenge both
materialist reductionism andrigid fundamentalism.
And, with no further ado, I'dlike to bring on Professor
Nchasti.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Hello Travis.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
That's a great introduction.
That's well put.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
A lot of tough words in there.
One question right off the batwas his concept of world
literature.
Is that kind of predictingglobalism?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yes, it's predicting globalism, but it's also a
recognition of the universalityof enlightenment, rationality,
merely statements of nationalistvalues and individual pride but
(07:12):
really a forum for universalhuman experience, sort of a
globalist vision of humanityrather than our own tribes.
Yeah, yeah, and that theliterature of various nations
could enter into dialogue overthe fundamental experiences of
human life.
That's interesting, yeah, and hewas the, you know, I don't know
(07:35):
whether I guess he was sort ofthe first person to sort of
celebrate that fact and seehimself not just writing, you
know, in the German tongue, forthe German people, but for a
world audience, essentiallyreaders from all different
(08:02):
nationalities, to find theirsense of universal humanity
confirmed.
I guess that'd be the way toput it.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah Well, to give our audience a little more
context, he's a guy who wrote abook on the science of colors.
He wrote a book on plants.
He wrote how about the Sorrowsof Young Werther?
Was that considered a novel?
Just prose, yes, or was itpoetry too?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It was a novella, a short novel, and it was written
in.
It was one of thoseepistolatory novels that were
written in the form of letters.
So Werder is writing the readerletters.
We have the collection of hisletters sent to us and the
(08:56):
reader is his best friend, andso he's sort of pouring out his
feelings and his experiences tous in a series of intimate
letters, which was kind of a newthing in romantic literature.
And then he also includes someother letters at the end, like
(09:17):
it's a dossier where he has apolice report at the end and he
has some other letters at theend and some other points of
view on what the letters are allabout.
So that's Werther, and itbecame a bestseller.
(09:39):
It was like one of the firstbestsellers.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah, it was like an instant sensation.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Instant sensation, and he became it was like an
instant sensation, instantsensation, and he became kind of
like a rock star.
He was 24 years old.
And so people started likedressing like him, because
Werther kind of dressed likeGoethe, with sort of beetle
boots and a white floppy shirtsort of beetle boots and a white
(10:06):
floppy shirt and he was kind ofmaybe one of the first hipsters
I guess you could call him.
And he was also sort of youthcoming-of-age tragedies, about
(10:31):
coming of age in a world thatyou don't fit into, which became
a modern archetype for modern,a trope yes, a trope might be
better A modern trope oftechnology and the times
(10:52):
changing so quickly that nogeneration could even keep up
with its own realities.
So immediately upon coming ofage you're bringing the old last
15 years experience to bear ona contemporary world that no
(11:13):
longer fits your innergenerations and it also causes
the youthful discontent with thestatus quo because the old guys
are profiting off the oldparadigms in a new world that
(11:39):
you can't find your place in.
And so that's part of the storyof what happens to Werther,
because he's trying to find loveand meaning and a meaningful
job.
That has already sort of giventhe girl that he's in love with
to a younger man, a man that isgoing to take on his dad's
(12:19):
business, and was promised tothe girl when they were like 15.
Was promised to the girl whenthey were out, um, and so that's
(12:50):
what the story is and okay, soit's a, it's a.
It's a great sort of tragiclove story, uh, but it's also a
uh, a our generation story,where he's talking about the new
post-enlightenment romanticidealism of a generation that's
(13:17):
finding it hard to fit into theold traditional hierarchy and it
became a favorite of Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, he read it five times.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, and he took it with him on his invasion of
Egypt, or I guess.
I don't know if you'd call ithim.
I guess you'd call it invasion.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Why did he like it so much?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
his um.
Why did he like it so much?
Well, I think he liked itbecause it was the story of uh,
of a guy who, you know, was kindof at odds with the old order
and was was trying to establishhis own place in it.
And uh, and also it was.
It has a tragic ending, whichhe might have found very moving,
given that, you know, as amilitary guy and problems
(14:12):
existential crises in his ownquest for meaning and purpose.
There's one of the letters thathe's writing to us in Goethe,
(14:43):
and they're talking about awoman who fell in love with
somebody in the small town thatwas near where Goethe was
staying during the summer it's asummer break.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Do you mean Goethe, or do you mean Werther, or do
you?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
mean Werther, I mean Werther.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
He got involved in a kind of messy engagement
previous to this, and so he'sspending his summer break in a
small village in Germany, in themountains, and that's where he
meets Lotte, who is the girlthat he falls in love with.
And so he writes back to us andtells us, you know, about this
relationship and what, and thatwhen he finds out that she has a
(15:37):
boyfriend, or actually a fiance, and so he's, he writes a
letter and he says you know, wewere talking about this woman
who killed herself by drowningherself in a lake in a nearby
village because of a failed loveaffair.
Her fiancé was saying that thatwas really stupid, that nobody
(16:08):
would ever kill themselves overa love affair and that there
must have been money involved orsomething like that.
And then Werder says and so Icalled him on it and I said what
do you know what peopleexperience in their lives?
You're so quick to judgeeverything by money and by
circumstance and by class.
(16:29):
How could you put down thiswoman who, out of her passionate
love for another human being,found her life not worth living?
I can understand that.
I can understand how this couldhappen.
So it's this whole sort of punkydefense of suicide, or the not
(16:54):
so much suicide itself but thepressures that might drive
someone to suicide, a sympathyfor that extreme emotion within
the human condition.
That is something that thestrong and drawn period would
like to have, that defendedright.
(17:15):
Strong emotion, even though itcontradicts the most basic of
shared community values, basicof shared community values.
Nevertheless, it's a realitythat has to be acknowledged.
And so when Werther admits hispassion for latte, that's part
(17:38):
of that too where she sort oftells him look, you know I'm
engaged, it's not.
You know I'm engaged, it's not.
You know I like you, I like togo to dances with you, but I
don't want you to express thisbecause, you know, once it's
expressed, then we're in deepdoo-doo socially.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And so we can't go there.
That's part of what happenshalfway through the story.
So what was the not?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
too much time on it.
But what was the storm andstress movement?
Well, the storm and stressmovement was a preference for a
big emotion in literature, inopera and in art.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And so art was getting a little more crazy then
.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yes, a little louder.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Like less romantic, less Disney.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yes, less Disney, Although there was still that.
You know.
Blake is a good example of that.
You know, I'm sure if he was inGermany, some of those pictures
of angels would have seemedstressful, Although, Blake, you
know, none of those angels areangry and they don't seem too
(18:57):
stormy.
They seem almost likeoverwhelmingly beautiful.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You're talking about the art of the era, you mean?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
uh blake's paintings oh, okay, yeah, yeah uh, the,
the art of the era was morenaturalist.
Uh, realism, uh, you knowlandscapes and stuff, um, you
know beautiful depictions ofnature and the storm and stress,
uh, became a little bit moreexpressionistic.
We think of Germans asexpressionistic anyway, and I
(19:33):
think that was being registeredby Goethe there in that early
period of his life.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Was that concept of Sturm und Stress?
Was it a movement kind of justin general in Germany, or was it
something specific to a certaindiscipline like art or or
literature?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I think it was general in Germany.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Okay, it was like a general movement.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, it was kind of.
It was why a Gerta became kindof a pop star for people or an
image of, of youthful rebellionfor people or an image of of
youthful rebellion because ofhis tragic uh story he wrote and
well, yeah, coming of age andall that.
Well, I'll give you an example.
There's kind of like punk rock,punk rock and you know it's a
(20:16):
yeah early punk, uh, uh lit, Iguess you could call it.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Tell us what you know what is.
What does goethe mean to youand how did he fit into the
subversive orthodoxy world andlike, how is he?
I mean that question, but alsojust what does he really mean to
you, or is he just more of a?
He helped invent the Westernliterature, canon.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
He's recognized, you know, as a genius and a world
historical figure, but nobodyreally knows exactly why, other
than that he wrote Faust and hehad a hit coming out of the box
with the Sorrows of YoungWerther.
But he is credited with notthat he invented world
(21:14):
literature, although that's partof it.
But during this period of time,with the growth of the
Enlightenment and the rise ofscience and rationality,
literature had to kind ofredefine itself as something
other than just stories aboutrationality.
(21:37):
You know stories about, likeSamuel Johnson's Rasselas, you
know stoic stories about livinga rational, good life, and for
Goethe it was well.
No, the novel is more ambitiousthan that.
It deals with inner experiencein an external world that
(22:03):
doesn't fit the inner experience.
Modernity is a kind ofalienation from the old world.
And the novels the very firstnovel, the celebrated novel Don
Quixote, is a story of a guywhose values don't fit the new
(22:24):
commercial world.
He wants to be a knight and benoble, and the new commercial
world is sort of based onrationality and emerging
capitalism.
And so there's this clashbetween the inner life and the
external circumstances.
And so how do you navigate that?
(22:45):
Well, you can create adelusional world of your own
internal imagination and livelike a knight against all of the
new values.
But there you run the danger ofeither being thought of as
crazy.
You run the danger of eitherbeing thought of as crazy or you
(23:08):
just end up being thiseccentric that doesn't fit in,
or you could just deny yourinternal experience and conform
to the new economic social order.
But then there's this internalalienation where you feel that
you're unreal and unexpressed.
Or with Goethe, you can writethe novel of self-development,
(23:32):
what he called the Biltroman,the novel of development, where
you make a character who's inconflict with his world and try
to work out the psychologicalsocial realities by articulating
(23:53):
his subjective experience.
Is that what Faust is?
That's what Faust is and that'swhat Goethe is, and that's what
his Beltungsroman Meister'sApprentice, I think, is how it's
translated in English of a guywho's trying to find how he can
(24:18):
relate his inner life to theexternal modern world, inner
life to the external modernworld, and he decides, kind of
like Goethe, to use art andliterature and theater as a way
of helping mediate the externalforces and his internal needs
(24:40):
and desires and experience.
And so that is the beginning ofthe modern novel, because most
modern novels, or most novels,all novels, are kind of epics of
homelessness.
They're not the great Greekepics of external triumph,
(25:04):
they're stories about people whodon't necessarily fit into the
status quo and struggle to findtheir place and their meaning in
spite of that.
And Goethe's novels ofself-development, like Sor of
Young Berthier and like Faust,try to describe what are the
(25:29):
psychological stages and crisesthat evolve from that.
So in a world where therewasn't any psychology yet, where
there wasn't any therapy, therewasn't any psychotherapy.
There was at best spiritualcounseling if you were lucky, or
(25:49):
a knowledgeable uncle, like inSorrows of Young Werther, where
his uncle is kind of a careercounselor who doesn't really
understand the inner life ofWerther, merely his external
circumstances, and so the novelbecomes a way of exploring these
(26:13):
psychological dynamics.
And for Goethe, you know Goethewas brilliant enough of a
person that impressed Nietzschewith his introspection, and
Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, I mean that's pretty.
Good audiences yeah, it's kindof a big deal.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, I don't like.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
You're Nietzsche and Napoleon's favorite writer.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah.
And so he probes thesepsychological and internal
crises, like in Werther, wherehe has a sympathy for people who
love people that don't lovethem back, or in the Wilhelm
(27:05):
Meister's Apprentice he has asympathy for artists whose work
is not understood and who aretrying to navigate the new world
that understands new thingsabout optics, but maybe not so
much new things about the innerlife, because the inner life
(27:28):
doesn't quite fit with the newworld of optics as it did before
.
Right, yeah.
So literature, world literaturebecomes, you know, as the whole
world undergoes these kinds oftransitions into the modern.
He was fascinated by that, andso he wrote Faust, Part One,
(27:52):
which is about a midlife crisisin the face of a guy who spent
his whole life seeking knowledgeand power and coming up with
nothing at midlife.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Before we go into Faust though, because I know
we're going to spend some timeon Faust, for sure but one thing
that I'm learning about Goethe,and you keep mentioning him in
this context of literature, butI think what he was trying to do
was way beyond literature.
He was like trying to speak tohis culture that, um, as they
(28:34):
were, as they were becoming I'mtrying to articulate the words
as they were becoming.
You know the old world, the,the older generation inverter.
You know being being stoic andcapitalistic and having all the
answers of.
You know the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Thinking they can make life mechanistic.
It seems that in every way,goethe held everything together
in tension rather than havingall the answers.
As I look at his whole work, itseems that it seems that his
genius was, as a polymath, wasthe ability to hold a bunch of
(29:14):
things together.
Um, he had a unique concept ofevil that it wasn't static but
it was dynamic and it was likeevolving and it was bouncing off
of the character, like in Faust.
We'll get to that that he wasalso saying that science and art
and mysticism are not separatethings.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
They can all be integrated, which no one from
the Enlightenment would havethought that, other than William
Blake maybe, and they thoughthe was crazy, right.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, and then just bringing in that punk rock
reality of tragedy and death andsuicide.
That was something from yourbook.
I want to read this.
This is like if somebody askedme why should you care about
Blake?
I think I mean not Blake.
I'm sorry, goethe, blake.
I think that I mean not Blake,I'm sorry, gerta.
(30:09):
That it would be kind of.
This is one of the concepts thatI think is pretty, pretty
special about him.
That is kind of like theanti-Disney concept.
It says, uh, it's coming off ofsome of the stuff from Faust,
but it says what is remarkablehere is that Gerta's insight
into the spiritual tragediesinherent both to the romantic
movement represented by verterand to the scientific
(30:32):
technological wager representedby faust.
These two sides of the modernpsyche, its idealistic youthful
longings for total personalfulfillment and its cynical
midlife thirst for power, serveas two sides of the same
cautionary tale.
The sorrows of young Wertherwarns us not to confuse our
desire for reality.
(30:53):
However authentic they may feel, our dreams can never be
fulfilled because they are asymptom of a deeper longing, not
of this world.
That's very anti-Disney rightthere.
I'm going to read it again Amen.
Our dreams can never befulfilled because they are a
symptom of a deeper longing, notof this world.
(31:14):
Wow, while Faust warns us that,no matter how much power we
have, no matter how infinite ourresources, god's providence
remains a mystery to our naturalselves, these essentially
religious ideas are more thanmoral.
They are ontological assertionsand existential assumptions
born of a religious worldviewthat can neither that could be
(31:37):
neither proven nor refuted bythe scientific method.
Hence their power has anenduring critique, and I put in
the side notes that paragraph isan anti-disney narrative.
What disney leaves out?
The world's tales fall short toultimate fulfillment and
happiness.
Only with the deeper longingscan we find our true grounding.
(32:00):
Um, and and I randomly I don'tknow if it was, I don't know if
it was in relation to somethingI was watching for Subversive
Orthodoxy or what, but somebody,oh, I think it was just a
general critique of the new SnowWhite, snow White movie.
Maybe it was something you sentme, I can't remember what it
was, but something was sayingthat the original Snow White
(32:24):
came from Grimm's fairy tales.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
That's right had.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
It had a lot of depth to it, it had spiritual depth
to it and, um, it had grit, andthen it was reduced to a woman
who needed to get kissed by aprince in order to you know, it
got, it got super reduced intothis like one-dimensional, no
conflict.
No, you know, not really just abad, just a villain that does,
(32:49):
you know, tries to prevent love,or something yes but it seems
that they they said they werecritiquing disney in general
saying that they strip.
They strip fairy tales and mythsfrom their, their essential
truth, which is the opposite.
You know, it's the exact workthat, uh, that gert is doing in
(33:13):
faust is not stripping it of itsgrit and that's the same as the
um, the storm and stressmovement was to say we're not
gonna sugarcoat life, let'sactually face it yeah well,
that's, that's that analogy isgreat let's put aside rainbows
(33:34):
and unicorns yeah and actuallylook at this person who
committed suicide.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah and uh, that it was not
something that rarely or neverhappened in the human condition.
You know, this is interesting.
I'm going to go a little bit ofa tangent here.
(34:01):
It reminds me, I think I toldyou I watched some of the
YouTube analyses of book reviewsof Faust and I think most of
them the ones I saw weredisappointed in this Faust.
(34:22):
Especially, they couldn't readpart two at all and they were
really disappointed at theChristian dimension of the end
of Faust where there wassalvation of grace and
redemption as being kind of acop-out Christian sort of easy
(34:47):
answer to a difficult problem.
And having not read part twowhich most of or if they even
read part two, they just said itwas unreadable.
Because part two is where allthe heavy lifting comes in.
As to how you reconcile thisdark reality of evil with a
(35:15):
divine creation is played outwas too difficult, or it
required such a differentsensibility than our sensibility
that they couldn't quite getwhat was really happening at the
(35:35):
end and so just dismissed it.
And it kind of reminded me of,like Dante's Divine Comedy.
Everybody reads the Inferno,but nobody reads the Purgatorio
or the Paradiso sections,because that's where the
(36:00):
religious sensibility kicks inin terms of its relationship to
all of the evil that isdescribed in the Inferno.
And it's the same with Faust.
It's like everybody's okay aslong as Faust is committing his
(36:21):
sort of horrendous crimes withHanging out with the devil, sort
of horrendous crimes withhanging out with the devil.
That all makes kind of punkysense.
But when the wheel starts toturn and Faust realizes that the
devil doesn't have all theanswers, that their interest
(36:45):
begins to fade a little, thatit's moving in a different
direction.
And then, since part two is thereconciliation of Faust and the
redemption of Mephistopheles,which is something that is
almost incomprehensible in amodern setting.
(37:07):
They kind of lose attention orlose focus and say there's
nothing happening, rather thanreally feel challenged by Part 2
, which wasn't published inGoethe's lifetime.
It was only after his deaththat Part 2 was published.
Gerda's lifetime it was onlyafter his death that part two
(37:32):
was published.
So at the beginning of Dante'sInferno, you probably remember
there's a message written overthe entrance to the Inferno or
hell, abandon all hope.
Ye who enter here.
You're familiar with that.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I thought that was from Pirates of the Caribbean,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Well, yeah.
I think they made it a littleless extreme, but anyway they
didn't have the whole printing.
It's Abandon all hope ye whoenter here.
And then underneath it it saysI too was created by eternal
(38:17):
love.
Now that's the kicker.
I can get.
Abandon all hope ye.
He end all hair.
But I too was created byeternal love yeah where is that
coming from right?
(38:38):
yeah, and part two of Faust iswhen Mephistopheles is is
redeemed.
That that is.
That is the kicker in that, andbecause it it follows from all
(39:02):
the crazy stuff that happens inpart two, but not logically.
You know, it was sort of likeyou were saying in your summary.
You know it requires thisontological leap into a
religious reality.
It's almost kind of like whenKierkegaard talks about Abraham
(39:23):
and Isaac.
You know the willingness tokill his son becomes a religious
act that leads to his son'ssalvation.
It just seems so wrong to amodern sensibility and yet it's
(39:45):
asking for a, a leap of faith.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Uh, that is that that um gerta is trying to sort of
work out in part two of faust ifyou can elevate out of your
literature brain, yeah, andthink like why does someone care
about Goethe today?
Okay, what does he bring to themodern person that's not
(40:12):
necessarily focused onliterature, because I do think
there's stuff there.
Okay, I'd just like to hear itfrom you Outside of literature.
What do you think it is?
What is his contribution?
Speaker 1 (40:29):
it is.
What is this contribution?
Well, this contribution is apsychological appropriation of
Christianity and enlightenment,the complex conversation between
Christianity and theenlightenment, between the
secular worship of power andknowledge versus the interior
desire for God and love and alarger connection to the
(40:55):
universe, to nature and creationand to other people that is not
mediated by knowledge and power.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
And so he sort of through literature, he kind of
stepped in and grabbed the twoand held them together rather
than letting them split apart.
Similar, similar to blakeexactly, yeah it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It's like the.
This is what elliot called thedisassociation of sensibility.
The inner life and the outerlife are separated now and we
worship the outer life and theouter life are separated now and
we worship the outer life, andthe inner life is ruled by whim
and advertising andmanipulations, have you?
Speaker 2 (41:35):
said that.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
I said that.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Oh, I thought you were just quoting someone no.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
And so the literature that tried to bridge that gap I
mean it already existed.
In Don Quixote there was asense where you could go back
and find, at the beginning ofmodernity, stories about trying
to bridge the gap between theinner and outer worlds that were
(42:02):
.
Now, every generation has adifferent outer world, but it
has the same inner world, theinner world of longing for
meaning and love andsignificance.
But the rules of the game thatthey were taught when they were
10 aren't in operation by thetime they're 16 or 18, or even
by the time they're 21.
So we have these coming-of-agestories that, in our pop culture
(42:29):
, are about the first time youhad sex, rather than the real
coming-of-age story that Goethetold about.
How do you come to grips with aworld that doesn't even
acknowledge your inner life oryour desire for the transcendent
?
That's the real question.
That coming of age is not justlosing your virginity and
(42:51):
getting your driver's license.
That coming of age is whereyou're initiated into a culture
that takes seriously your innerlongings for significance,
meaning longings forsignificance, meaning love,
(43:13):
community, and that's the realcoming-of-age story.
And when in Werther, we'retalking about coming of age in
1778, right, you know the verybeginning of a modern world and
those values are under attack bythe old establishment that
(43:33):
wasn't ready for the AmericanRevolution or for the liberty
for all or, you know, peoplefalling in love and not giving
in to arranged marriages, and sothat was.
(43:54):
So.
He represented sort of theyouthful coming of age, the
alienated hip person, werther,who wanted to follow the
dictates of his inner life andnot that of the world that wasn
(44:15):
arranging their own money andpower and ownership of things,
and even arranging marriagesthat weren't true to what people
(44:36):
were feeling.
And so he tells that story andmakes it a tragedy of sorts of a
person that wanted to remaintrue to the inner life but found
it in impossible conflict withthe world he was in.
And that became a bestsellerand you could see how that was
(44:57):
kind of like the first rebelwithout a cause.
Now, with Faust, it's moremidlife crisis.
Now, with Faust, it's moremidlife crisis.
I spent my whole life servingmoney and power and knowledge.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
He got to the height.
People may not know anythingabout Faust.
Yeah, faust tells a story.
It's a two-part play.
Right In the first part, faustis visited by a uh devil sort of
character yeah calledmephistopheles and he the.
(45:33):
What I learned is you know, Ihaven't read it myself- yet um,
but I learned he made a wagerand the wager is not what you
typically would think he's notsaying.
He's not saying like do thismoral thing or immoral thing or
I will take your soul.
He's saying um you, I will giveyou, I will assist you on doing
everything and anything youwant to the point of total
(45:58):
fulfillment, and the wager islike if you actually ever get
satisfied, then I get your soul,or something is.
Is that right?
Yeah, yes, that's right, thatum uh exploring like constant
striving for your whole life,for knowledge and beauty and
meaning.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Right.
And uh, uh, Faust takes the umwager because he can't imagine
being contented ever, that thatlife is just constant, uh,
unfolding of new desire, afternew desire, after new desire.
So why would I ever think thatI would ever be contented or at
(46:36):
peace?
I think in the Faust um there'sa line in a famous line where
if, if you ever say the words,um, I am contented, let this
last forever, I get your soul.
Yeah, and so faust is knowshimself as well as he can that
(47:05):
this is never going to happenfor him.
So it really isn't a deal withthe devil in his mind.
It's just sort of well, thedevil isn't as bad as people
think, in the sense of he'sgoing to just keep me striving,
and that's all I ever reallywant to do is strive and have
new desires.
So you know what's there tolose.
So you know what's there tolose Because I don't have an
(47:27):
experience of my soul yet, oryou know.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Or what I think of as my soul is this striving part
of me, and even before he makesthe wager right, is he already
at the height of scholarship?
What's the word Scholasticism?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Well, scholarship, yeah yeah, he's at the height of
his career.
He's at.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Before the wager right Before the wager.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
He is sort of a guy who spent his whole life seeking
knowledge and power and ithasn't really paid off the way
he thought.
So this is an important part ofthe story.
So he decides that he's goingto commit suicide because all of
(48:20):
this power and knowledge,however much he's been able to
obtain, doesn't strike him assatisfying or enough.
And he's in this little dustylab with Wagner, his lab
assistant, and he never married,he never had family or anything
(48:42):
, and so he decides he's goingto kill himself.
And then he, before he can dothat, he's disturbed by music
coming from the village, andit's described as Easter music
because it's part of the Eastercelebration.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
It's.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Easter week right now .
Speaker 1 (49:06):
And it's Easter week.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Holy week.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
So it's interesting, the Werder meets Latte on spring
break and Faust is pulled outof his suicide by the Easter
music of the celebration in thevillage of Easter week.
So he goes outside to seewhat's up and he gets outside
(49:35):
his normal mind that ispreoccupied with power and money
, and he has a beer with thelocal laborers and he dances
with a peasant girl and heenters into ordinary life and
(50:04):
discovers you know, this isprobably what I've been missing
is actual life with human beings.
And so he comes back to his laband decides he's going to
retranslate the Gospel of Johnso that it doesn't begin with in
the beginning was the word, butin the beginning was the act.
So now he's on like a secondphase of his life, to enter into
(50:29):
life.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
And what happens is Life is action rather than
knowledge.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Yes, life is action rather than knowledge.
But it's sort of like if he hadbeen into action he probably
would have discovered that it'salso knowledge, right?
So it's sort of like, whateveryou're dealing with in your
first half of your life, you seethrough at middle age and now
(50:59):
you have to develop the otherside of yourself.
And that's a Goethean motif isthe novel of development.
It's like you go too far in onedirection and then life brings
you up short and then opens upthe other side.
(51:20):
So now he's going to enter intothe other side.
But what he doesn't realize isthat a black poodle snuck in
when he was coming back from thefestival, the Easter festival,
(51:51):
and that black poodle wasMephistopheles, or the devil, or
a demon.
A servant of the devil hadsnuck into his lab, and so he
finds the dog hiding behind thestove and he uses one of his,
and he uses one of his potionsthat he's developed in his lab,
where he can make anybody tellthe truth.
(52:13):
It's a truth-telling potion.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
So he compels Mephistopheles to reveal it
Because Faust was a scholar andalso an alchemist.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Yes, yes.
And so he compels the dog tosay who he is.
So the dog transforms intoMephistopheles and
Mephistopheles says and thisrelates to what we said about
Dante's Inferno we said aboutDante's Inferno, you know, with
(52:55):
the subtitle I also was createdby eternal love.
Who are you?
And Mephistopheles says I ampart of that force in the
universe that always wells,always wells evil, but only
produces good.
Now, that's another one ofthose religious leaps of faith,
(53:19):
like what?
That's sort of like the paradoxof the fortunate fall right that
Adam and Eve's sin in thegarden doomed us to a life of
(53:40):
sin, but it also made itpossible for us to be redeemed,
and also made possible grace ina Eden that was unaware of its
(54:13):
own beauty, truth and justice.
So it put humanity on the road,for it put humanity on the road
for self-discovery andself-creation, or one could call
(54:35):
it a educational journey intofathoming the true nature of
grace that was beyond simply theacquisition of power and
knowledge.
And so that's kind of wherepart one ends, where Faust is
(55:01):
able to get everything he wants,or everything he thinks he
wants.
So he gets his youth back, hegets to seduce Gretchen, he gets
all the money he wants, he getsall the power he wants, he gets
everything that he thinks hewanted.
But then Gretchen ends uppregnant, killing her baby, then
(55:31):
killing herself, and beingcondemned to hell.
And he realizes that he didn'twant, that he didn't want the
collateral damage that came withhaving everything he wanted,
that came with having everythinghe wanted.
(55:51):
And so he looks toMephistopheles to sort of right
the wrong.
And Mephistopheles said well, Ididn't promise you happiness, I
only promised you power andknowledge, which is what you
said you wanted.
And if you ever get happiness,then I get your soul, because
you never wanted happiness, youthought happiness was impossible
(56:12):
.
And now Gretchen is safelywithin my clutches in hell.
And so, uh, you know, are youresponsible for that or not?
And then Gretchen repents ofher sins and is redeemed by God.
(56:36):
So, mephistopheles.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
After her death.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Before her death, oh, her death.
So when she dies because she's,I don't know whether she
actually commits suicide orwhether she's executed, but
right when she is trying to killherself or dies, the devil I
(57:06):
don't know whether it'sMephistopheles or the actual
devil says uh, now she's mine,oh, so she was.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
She was sentenced to be beheaded for infanticide.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
Okay, so, so right before she's beheaded, uh, the
devil says, uh, she's mine.
And then God opens up theheavens and says no, she's
forgiven.
Now this divine intervention issomething that modern readers
(57:41):
find cheesy, but they haven'tread part two and they don't
know how Grace operates in theGertian story.
He's not really offering acheap grace at the end of
Gretchen's life.
He's putting it into a cosmiccontext that Faust himself does
(58:08):
not yet understand.
So Faust goes back to his orgyat the Walpurgisburg party with
mixed emotions, because this waswhat he said he wanted, and yet
(58:31):
this he didn't realize, thatGretchen would pay the price.
But did Gretchen pay the price,or was she really?
It sounds as if God saved her.
Why would he save her?
It doesn't quite make sense tome.
So you know, I've made my wager.
(59:06):
So spiritual plane because it'snot as realistic a story of a
person who has sold his soul tothe devil and now is seeing the
consequences it's more of.
(59:27):
He enters into the spiritualworld of Mephistopheles, which
is this imaginative world wherehe can go and do anything he
wants, and so he decides thathe's going to go back and make
love to Helen of Troy and haveall of the kingdoms of the world
(59:53):
, as well as the love of themost beautiful woman in history.
And so it plays out as thiskind of plays out as this kind
(01:00:16):
of dream, visionary fantasy, inwhich a lot of the internal
spiritual and psychologicalsteps, after the fact of having
seen the consequences of yourfulfilling your desires on other
people, what they are on otherpeople, become reality for him
and what it takes for him toturn around and give his soul to
(01:00:38):
God at the end.
And so that's the more probablythat's the Purgatoria and
Paradiso sections of Faust that,like most people who read
buying comedy, don't readbecause they think they already
(01:01:03):
know that story.
But it's not the story theythink they know.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah, obviously Goethe is using his imagination
big time.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
This is not your normal Bible story, Right right
and it's kind of a dreamscenario.
It's kind of like it's a kindof a dream scenario.
It's kind of like I I wouldhave, I think in my rigid
evangelical mindset I would havebeen like, oh, this is just
weird and this is just.
You know, maybe it's not maybeeven borderline demonic and not
(01:01:37):
orthodox at all.
But what I think a guy likegerta or blake are doing is
actually exploring, for onething.
Exploring they're thinking,thinking out loud through their
literature, what I, what I've,what I've learned from.
About faust it sounds likealmost like goethe's imaginary
(01:02:00):
autobiography of exploring hisown mind and desires exactly I,
I agree, totally, totally and sotherefore like, and you're
saying, you're saying that hekind of created that genre of
having um, what do you call it,where you're writing about a
life development?
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
uh, active imagination, uh, you call it the
build on, build on roman orwhatever.
Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Build on roman?
Yeah, that yeah, the vibe of uh, yeah the story of uh spiritual
development so to, so to gertzput this brick down, and then is
that what um or he, he moldedthis brick, called that, and
then did he basically inspire aguy like dostoevsky to then take
(01:02:46):
that and build it with like 10bricks and tell the story of a
whole family.
Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Yes, yes, I think that that's exactly what happens
.
Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
So Dostoevsky was influenced, you would think.
Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Or obviously Goethe at some point.
But I'm sure there's culturaldifferences, because the
Russians and the Germans are notknown for their familiarity or
(01:03:18):
their love of each other'sculture, although Goethe's Faust
became an opera and made itsway to Russia, and Russians love
opera and so the story was notlost on.
Him takes literary realism,which is that idea of telling
(01:03:59):
the truth about social andpsychological experience as well
as spiritual aspirations, andbrings them together in his
novels, so that you have thisnovel of development that tries
to describe the redemption ofsome pretty dark characters, and
usually what happens is hedoesn't succeed.
And so for the first I wouldsay, like Crime and Punishment
(01:04:22):
and the Idiot and the Demons,the Possessed you mean the
possessed he tried to show likethe redemption of a terrorist or
the redemption of a in theidiot, a redemption of a sort of
a person that was not really aperson, who was like a perfect
(01:04:47):
Christian from his idea of aperfect Christian and not a real
redeemed Christian, because hecouldn't imagine how that person
would become a real.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Christian.
Are you talking about the idiot?
Yeah, the idiot.
That's what the idiot's about.
Yeah, it's about that's cool.
Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Yeah the idiot, yeah the idiot.
That's what the idiot's about.
Yeah, it's about cool, yeah so,but all of his books you know
they like in uh and crime.
Let's take crime and punishment.
It's a good example um wait, Ihave a.
I have a quote right now or nota quote, but like a comment on
that.
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I found um, which is interesting because we're going
to be talking about Dostoevskyat some point, there'll be an
episode of just him, but it sayshere's how the Dostoevsky and
Goethe relate.
It says for Dostoevsky, theworks of Goethe, werther and
Faust were simply proofs of thewrong way the West had taken.
(01:05:40):
Dostoevsky would use Goethe'sdepravity of characters to
create a Faustian context forhis novella the Possessed,
including that of characterdescription, which also relates
to literary time.
Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Yeah, right, and that's world literature, right.
Yeah, the Russian takes fromthe German but improves it from
his point of view, improves itfrom his point of view.
But you know Dostoevsky, andwe'll just go here because I
think it's important for asubversive orthodoxy Dostoevsky
(01:06:17):
is kind of like Beethoven in away where he had a larger vision
of the kind of music he wantedto make or the kind of novels he
wanted to make, or the kind ofnovels he wanted to write the
redemption of a would-beterrorist, or the example of a
(01:06:39):
perfect Christian.
Or the one book he never livedlong enough to write was the
Life of a Sinner.
I think it was Life of aRedeemed Sinner or something
like that, about himselfactually.
Well, they were all kind ofabout himself and he never felt
(01:07:00):
that he really nailed it, reallynailed it.
They were kind of likeunfinished masterpieces or
partial masterpieces wherepeople.
You know, it would be great ifRaskolnikov, actually, you know,
found redemption at the end ofCrime and Punishment and there
(01:07:23):
is a kind of a redemption at theend, but Dostoevsky didn't
think he ever really nailed it,that it wasn't realistic enough,
that it didn't seem like thatwould really happen, and so by
his own standards, these werelike they say about
(01:07:47):
Shakespeare's plays, you know,they start great and the
characters are wonderful, butthen he doesn't know how to end
them, so he just has everybodyget killed off or he has, you
know, a happy ending Did theysay that about Shakespeare.
Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Yeah, I'm not that well read.
(01:08:21):
And one brother is going toexemplify the reconciliation of
an ordinary person to God inlight of the psychology of the
underground which governs humanstriving Faustian striving right
, um, and he and the what wehave as brothers karamazov,
(01:08:55):
which is his last novel, is whathe considers his masterpiece.
Uh, that brought it, that thatbrought it together, that that
finally did.
What he always wanted to do isget all the pieces in place the
contrast between the person whois too much in his head versus
the person who's too much in hissexual passions, versus the
(01:09:17):
person who is trying toreconcile himself with God and
succeeds.
And that's part one and parttwo.
He never lived to write whichwas going to be about the same
brothers 20 years later becausethey're in their 20s in brothers
(01:09:40):
karamazov.
But brothers karamazov was goingto have part two in which he
showed them 20 years down theline and that's kind of similar
to Goethe.
You know, you start withSorrows of Young Bertha, 20s,
and then you end in the midlifecrisis of Faust and probably in
(01:10:01):
his 40s or 50s, and there's thatsame thing going on with
Dostoevsky.
But the great thing aboutBrothers Karamazov, part 1, is
there are older characters inPart 1 that have navigated that
midlife crisis.
So you really don't really needPart 2, because you kind of
(01:10:25):
have it all in part one andthat'll be fun to look at.
But the fact that, like Goethe,you're writing that novels are
not like clever stories aboutguys who tried to make it in
business and failed or fell inlove or something.
(01:10:47):
They're really about how youreconcile the inner life to the
outer life, and every generationneeds its novelists from
Goethe's point of view to talkabout the new world.
You're navigating right, and sothis is kind of in Werther.
(01:11:08):
Werther is sort of navigatingwhat it would be like to come of
age in 1778, a new world that'smoving toward democracy but
hasn't caught up to itself yet,which is every generation right.
You're coming of age in a worldthat's already obsolete and you
(01:11:31):
were kind of trained for theobsolete world.
But there's a new world on thehorizon.
How do you navigate that?
Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Well, you can't just navigate that in a quest for
power and knowledge, or you'regoing to end up on obsolete
knowledge an obsolete little guyin his you know, uh, lab, uh,
without any connection to reallife that's so relevant now
(01:12:01):
because I feel like the thecoming of age from 10 years to
10 years now is way more rapidlyaccelerating oh yeah, two years
social media and um socialmedia, digital media, ai and all
that oh, yeah, yeah just fromjust from our, just from my age
I'm in my 40s to a 20 year old,right now my son's 18, our
(01:12:25):
worlds are completely differentin how they're paced and how
people relate.
Yeah, so to write, to writesomething now, or just, not even
just for literature, but justfor the sake of understanding
your culture now, with 10 yeariterations, is insane compared
to their generations, was youknow, probably?
(01:12:47):
Things were changing a lot over50 years, that's right.
And now things are changing alot over two to five years,
that's right.
I don't know what to do withthat.
Well, well how Gerda speaksinto that.
Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Well, the the good news is the inner life isn't
really changed.
Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Yeah, there's still the desire for meaning, love,
connection, community, god.
All those transcended desiresare as fresh with every
generation, are as fresh withevery generation.
It's just that they meet upwith different sources of
(01:13:38):
resistance or misinterpretations, or they themselves have it
harder to understand themselvesif they don't have a writer or a
spiritual director or somebodythat can mirror for them the
spiritual world that they wantto bring.
One of the writers that is kindof a contemporary Goethe in
(01:14:02):
terms of writing Beldung'sRomans was Herman Hesse, who won
the Nobel Prize in 1927, Ithink.
Development that were about ayoung idealistic character and
the social forces allied againsthim that were really trying to
(01:14:37):
direct him toward knowledge andpower, not truth and faith and
faith.
And so they were all sort oflike Siddhartha.
His famous story about theBeldungsroman of the Buddha
(01:14:57):
tries to divide the Buddha'sdevelopment into sort of
universal stages, stages of howyou transform from a seeker to a
finder, from someone who islooking for the truth in a world
that doesn't seem to provide itto someone who sees the truth
(01:15:18):
at a more transcendent level.
And in one of the front piecesof one of the Hesse's novels is
the little quote from Hesse, andit's I only tried to live in
accordance with the promptingsof my own heart.
(01:15:39):
Why was that so difficult?
Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
And that's classic Goethe right, did you say that
again?
Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
I only try to live according to the promptings of
my own heart.
Why was that so difficult?
And so the stories are about whyit's hard to live according to
the promptings of your own heart, about why it's hard to live
according to the promptings ofyour own heart, and in the
(01:16:15):
Sorrows of Young Bertha it'ssort of like well, because you
have this transcendent idealismthat doesn't fit your
compromised world and thatdoesn't make you defective but
that does make you unrealistic,basically.
(01:16:37):
And after Werder came out andbecame really popular and
everybody was dressing likeWerther, but also it caused a
lot of suicides, actually ofyoung people copying Werther.
(01:16:59):
What do you make of that?
Well, goethe wrote later aboutthat and he said wrote later
about that.
And he said you know, I thoughtthat for me Goethe was the
person I had to get rid of.
Werther was the part of me, theyoung, idealistic, romantic,
(01:17:20):
that I had to get rid of so thatI could get on with the serious
work of writing Faust.
And so, although I don't thinkhe mentions Faust, but that's
sort of what ended up being wasthat he had to mature out of
(01:17:43):
that youthful rebellion, thatrebel without a cause, into an
adult with a purpose.
And he couldn't do that untilhe got all those feelings and
all those confusions and angerand feeling of displacement and
(01:18:07):
resentment at the world thatmade it impossible for him to
have the woman that he loved outon the page.
And then, once for him, he gotit out on the page.
It was kind of cathartic, butit didn't turn out to be
cathartic for a lot of the youngpeople that read him and that
(01:18:27):
caused him a lot of.
Actually, it didn't cause himas much pain and self-doubt as
it would have caused me or youprobably.
But he was enough of aristocratto say well, gee, I'm not
(01:18:53):
responsible for the fact thatpeople don't know how to read
novels, they're not.
That novel is not a model onhow to live, it's a warning on
how not to live.
Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
And so that's why he just attributed it to people's
stupidity.
Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
Yeah, ignorance.
That's why Hesse puts a littlepreface to his Bildungsroman.
I only tried to live inaccordance with my own heart.
Why was that so difficultTelling you what the novel is
going to be about?
It's going to be about thisstruggle with being true to your
(01:19:30):
heart.
In an alien environment or aworld that's so rapidly changing
, it's hard to find your contextand your place in it, and that
this isn't your fault and itisn't something that you should
beat yourself up over, butsomething that should invite you
to a more transcendent faithand an order that transcends
(01:19:54):
this world.
And how you can kind of intuitthat or see it in operation.
That's kind of how Fowl's partone and part two work.
That's kind of how Faust PartOne and Part Two work.
But if you just read Part One,you know you only get half the
story.
And if you just read the Demonsor Crime and Punishment, you
(01:20:20):
sort of get, you know, a verypowerful critique of human
psychology, but you don't getDostoevsky's sort of mature
spiritual response to.
Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
A redemptive vision.
Speaker 1 (01:20:41):
The redemptive vision as strongly or as persuasively
as he thought he did in theBrothers Karamazov.
Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
Do you think Goethe was preaching at the end of
Faust or do you think he didn'tknow how else to take it because
that was his worldview?
Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Well, that's a really good question, because I think
he was demonstrating… he wasproclaiming something is a kind
of Greek tragedy about themodern myth of the pursuit of
(01:21:31):
power and knowledge as theultimate end of human existence.
Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
Which it bankrupts in part one.
Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
Yes, it bankrupts in part one and in part two he
(01:22:04):
offers sort of like a new genreof fantasy and dream scenario
epic redemption that's takingplace inside his psyche and soul
rather than out in the world ofof power and knowledge.
Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
It's sort of like A psychedelic redemptive fantasy A
psychedelic, yeah, psychedelicredemption.
No, that as a category, thatwould be a whole new thing.
Psychedelic redemptive fantasy.
Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
Yeah, before 1968.
Well before 1968.
Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
And that concludes this episode.
I think there may be somethingin here for all of you, each of
you whether you're a skeptic, abeliever or somewhere in between
on your own deconstructionjourney, we're going to be
exploring what it means to livea life of deep meaning in a
world that often feelsfragmented and nihilistic, and
this revelatory faith doesn'tseem to come to us from the
(01:23:10):
expected places.
The prophetic voice doesn'tseem to come from the pulpits or
the seminaries.
It's breaking through in novels, poetry, activism, art and the
unexpected corners of culture.
We hope you'll join us on thisongoing conversation.
Until then, thank you forlistening to the Subversive
(01:23:31):
Orthodoxy Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
If you found this meaningful, please leave a
five-star review subscribe andshare with anyone who might
(01:23:57):
resonate with this conversation.
Adios.
This has been a SubversiveOrthodoxy podcast with Travis
Mullen and Professor Inchosti,or, if I could drift through it,
dancing through moonlight undernighttime skies, forgetting the
world's lies.
Meanwhile, I'm fine Lookingthrough a stained glass oceanic
scene.
Say hi to human beings with asmile unseen, grabbing
wildflowers as I slide downhills after a rain.
the real coming of age story that Gerta told about.
How do you come to grips with aworld that doesn't even
acknowledge your inner life oryour desire for the transcendent
?
That's the real question.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
That's so relevant now because I feel like the
coming of age from 10 years to10 years now is rapidly
accelerating.
Social media, digital media, aiand all that.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, just from my age I'm in my forties to a 20
year old, right now, my son's 18.
Our worlds are completelydifferent in how they're paced
and how people relate.
So to write, to write somethingnow or just, not even just for
literature, but just for thesake of understanding your
culture now, with 10 yeariterations, is insane compared
(00:47):
to their generations, was youknow, probably things were
changing a lot over 50 years.
That's right, and now thingsare changing a lot over two to
five years.
I don't know what to do withthat.
Well well how Gerhe speaks intothat.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Well, the good news is, the inner life isn't really
changed.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, there's still the desire for meaning, love,
connection, community, God.
All those transcendent desiresare as fresh with every
generation.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Welcome to the Subversive Orthodoxy Podcast.
I'm your host, travis Mullen,and I'm excited to have you with
us.
This is a podcast aboutphilosophy and meaning.
It is about how we as humanswithstand the challenges of our
cultures.
It is about the generalJudeo-Christian revelation of
God in the world and how thebloodiest century ever recorded
(01:55):
couldn't kill that revelation.
It's also about how thatrevelation, tossed aside as
archaic, outdated and obsolete,may be the very life-giving
power we need to resist thisdistracted techno state we're
living in full of anxiety,depression and teenage suicide.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
It's great entertainment, thrilling
entertainment.
It's the inside story, packedwith drama, today.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Today we're diving into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
and, as a disclaimer, right fromthe outset, I do not know
German, I do not know how topronounce German, so bear with
me on a few words here.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wasborn in 1749 and died in 1832.
He was a german polymath, apoet, playwright, novelist,
(03:12):
scientist and statesman whoseinfluence on western thought and
literature is profound.
Born in frankfurt, germany, hedisplayed early brilliance in
literature and the naturalsciences, later becoming a
central figure in the Germanstorm and drawn which I did not
know how to pronounce storm andstress, movement which rebelled
(03:34):
against enlightenment,rationalism, in favor of intense
emotion and individuality.
His sorrows his book thesorrows of young Werther 17,
made him an internationalliterary sensation, while his
magnum opus, faust, remains oneof the most celebrated works in
world literature.
Goethe's intellectual pursuitsextended beyond literature.
(03:56):
He engaged deeply withphilosophy, optics and natural
sciences, often challengingprevailing scientific and
theological assumptions.
Sciences often challengingprevailing scientific and
theological assumptions.
His concept of world literatureanticipated globalization's
cultural exchange and hisholistic approach to knowledge
placed him at odds with rigidenlightenment and parasism, and
(04:17):
later romantic escapism.
In his book SubversiveOrthodoxy, professor Enchasti
positions Goethe alongsidefigures like William Blake, both
of whom challenged the forcesof religious dogmatism and
secular materialism.
Like Blake, goethe resisted aworld reduced to mechanistic
rationality, while alsocritiquing the rigid moralism of
(04:39):
institutional religion.
Instead, he sought a poetic andphilosophical vision that
embraced paradox, integratingthe sciences with the mystical,
the rational with the mythic.
(05:01):
His book Faust, for instance,critiques both modern hubris and
medieval superstition,ultimately affirming redemption
beyond human striving.
Nietzsche admired Faust becauseit dramatized the modern human
condition, the relentlesspursuit of knowledge, experience
and power, yet the ultimateneed for something transcendent.
Faust's dissatisfaction mirrorsNietzsche's idea of Übermensch,
the Superman, pushing beyondconventional morality and
(05:21):
embracing the tragic beauty ofexistence.
Beyond conventional moralityand embracing the tragic beauty
of existence.
However, goethe's visiondiverges from Nietzsche's in
that Faust finds grace,suggesting that striving alone
is insufficient without divineintervention.
Goethe's influence remainsembedded in the American
worldview, particularly in thecultural ideal of self-creation
(05:42):
and the pursuit of experience.
In the cultural ideal ofself-creation and the pursuit of
experience, his Faustianarchetype lives on in the
Silicon Valley's innovators,political leaders and artists
who chase progress, often at agreat personal cost.
His belief in world literatureechoes in America's global
cultural and intellectualexchanges, and his insistence on
an integrated vision, one thatrefuses to separate science from
(06:05):
art, reason from faithcontinues to challenge both
materialist reductionism andrigid fundamentalism.
And, with no further ado, I'dlike to bring on Professor
Nchasti.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Hello Travis.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
That's a great introduction.
That's well put.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
A lot of tough words in there.
One question right off the batwas his concept of world
literature.
Is that kind of predictingglobalism?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yes, it's predicting globalism, but it's also a
recognition of the universalityof enlightenment, rationality,
merely statements of nationalistvalues and individual pride but
(07:12):
really a forum for universalhuman experience, sort of a
globalist vision of humanityrather than our own tribes.
Yeah, yeah, and that theliterature of various nations
could enter into dialogue overthe fundamental experiences of
human life.
That's interesting, yeah, and hewas the, you know, I don't know
(07:35):
whether I guess he was sort ofthe first person to sort of
celebrate that fact and seehimself not just writing, you
know, in the German tongue, forthe German people, but for a
world audience, essentiallyreaders from all different
(08:02):
nationalities, to find theirsense of universal humanity
confirmed.
I guess that'd be the way toput it.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah Well, to give our audience a little more
context, he's a guy who wrote abook on the science of colors.
He wrote a book on plants.
He wrote how about the Sorrowsof Young Werther?
Was that considered a novel?
Just prose, yes, or was itpoetry too?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It was a novella, a short novel, and it was written
in.
It was one of thoseepistolatory novels that were
written in the form of letters.
So Werder is writing the readerletters.
We have the collection of hisletters sent to us and the
(08:56):
reader is his best friend, andso he's sort of pouring out his
feelings and his experiences tous in a series of intimate
letters, which was kind of a newthing in romantic literature.
And then he also includes someother letters at the end, like
(09:17):
it's a dossier where he has apolice report at the end and he
has some other letters at theend and some other points of
view on what the letters are allabout.
So that's Werther, and itbecame a bestseller.
(09:39):
It was like one of the firstbestsellers.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah, it was like an instant sensation.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Instant sensation, and he became it was like an
instant sensation, instantsensation, and he became kind of
like a rock star.
He was 24 years old.
And so people started likedressing like him, because
Werther kind of dressed likeGoethe, with sort of beetle
boots and a white floppy shirtsort of beetle boots and a white
(10:06):
floppy shirt and he was kind ofmaybe one of the first hipsters
I guess you could call him.
And he was also sort of youthcoming-of-age tragedies, about
(10:31):
coming of age in a world thatyou don't fit into, which became
a modern archetype for modern,a trope yes, a trope might be
better A modern trope oftechnology and the times
(10:52):
changing so quickly that nogeneration could even keep up
with its own realities.
So immediately upon coming ofage you're bringing the old last
15 years experience to bear ona contemporary world that no
(11:13):
longer fits your innergenerations and it also causes
the youthful discontent with thestatus quo because the old guys
are profiting off the oldparadigms in a new world that
(11:39):
you can't find your place in.
And so that's part of the storyof what happens to Werther,
because he's trying to find loveand meaning and a meaningful
job.
That has already sort of giventhe girl that he's in love with
to a younger man, a man that isgoing to take on his dad's
(12:19):
business, and was promised tothe girl when they were like 15.
Was promised to the girl whenthey were out, um, and so that's
(12:50):
what the story is and okay, soit's a, it's a.
It's a great sort of tragiclove story, uh, but it's also a
uh, a our generation story,where he's talking about the new
post-enlightenment romanticidealism of a generation that's
(13:17):
finding it hard to fit into theold traditional hierarchy and it
became a favorite of Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, he read it five times.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, and he took it with him on his invasion of
Egypt, or I guess.
I don't know if you'd call ithim.
I guess you'd call it invasion.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Why did he like it so much?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
his um.
Why did he like it so much?
Well, I think he liked itbecause it was the story of uh,
of a guy who, you know, was kindof at odds with the old order
and was was trying to establishhis own place in it.
And uh, and also it was.
It has a tragic ending, whichhe might have found very moving,
given that, you know, as amilitary guy and problems
(14:12):
existential crises in his ownquest for meaning and purpose.
There's one of the letters thathe's writing to us in Goethe,
(14:43):
and they're talking about awoman who fell in love with
somebody in the small town thatwas near where Goethe was
staying during the summer it's asummer break.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Do you mean Goethe, or do you mean Werther, or do
you?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
mean Werther, I mean Werther.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
He got involved in a kind of messy engagement
previous to this, and so he'sspending his summer break in a
small village in Germany, in themountains, and that's where he
meets Lotte, who is the girlthat he falls in love with.
And so he writes back to us andtells us, you know, about this
relationship and what, and thatwhen he finds out that she has a
(15:37):
boyfriend, or actually a fiance, and so he's, he writes a
letter and he says you know, wewere talking about this woman
who killed herself by drowningherself in a lake in a nearby
village because of a failed loveaffair.
Her fiancé was saying that thatwas really stupid, that nobody
(16:08):
would ever kill themselves overa love affair and that there
must have been money involved orsomething like that.
And then Werder says and so Icalled him on it and I said what
do you know what peopleexperience in their lives?
You're so quick to judgeeverything by money and by
circumstance and by class.
(16:29):
How could you put down thiswoman who, out of her passionate
love for another human being,found her life not worth living?
I can understand that.
I can understand how this couldhappen.
So it's this whole sort of punkydefense of suicide, or the not
(16:54):
so much suicide itself but thepressures that might drive
someone to suicide, a sympathyfor that extreme emotion within
the human condition.
That is something that thestrong and drawn period would
like to have, that defendedright.
(17:15):
Strong emotion, even though itcontradicts the most basic of
shared community values, basicof shared community values.
Nevertheless, it's a realitythat has to be acknowledged.
And so when Werther admits hispassion for latte, that's part
(17:38):
of that too where she sort oftells him look, you know I'm
engaged, it's not.
You know I'm engaged, it's not.
You know I like you, I like togo to dances with you, but I
don't want you to express thisbecause, you know, once it's
expressed, then we're in deepdoo-doo socially.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And so we can't go there.
That's part of what happenshalfway through the story.
So what was the not?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
too much time on it.
But what was the storm andstress movement?
Well, the storm and stressmovement was a preference for a
big emotion in literature, inopera and in art.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And so art was getting a little more crazy then
.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yes, a little louder.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Like less romantic, less Disney.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yes, less Disney, Although there was still that.
You know.
Blake is a good example of that.
You know, I'm sure if he was inGermany, some of those pictures
of angels would have seemedstressful, Although, Blake, you
know, none of those angels areangry and they don't seem too
(18:57):
stormy.
They seem almost likeoverwhelmingly beautiful.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You're talking about the art of the era, you mean?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
uh blake's paintings oh, okay, yeah, yeah uh, the,
the art of the era was morenaturalist.
Uh, realism, uh, you knowlandscapes and stuff, um, you
know beautiful depictions ofnature and the storm and stress,
uh, became a little bit moreexpressionistic.
We think of Germans asexpressionistic anyway, and I
(19:33):
think that was being registeredby Goethe there in that early
period of his life.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Was that concept of Sturm und Stress?
Was it a movement kind of justin general in Germany, or was it
something specific to a certaindiscipline like art or or
literature?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I think it was general in Germany.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Okay, it was like a general movement.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, it was kind of.
It was why a Gerta became kindof a pop star for people or an
image of, of youthful rebellionfor people or an image of of
youthful rebellion because ofhis tragic uh story he wrote and
well, yeah, coming of age andall that.
Well, I'll give you an example.
There's kind of like punk rock,punk rock and you know it's a
(20:16):
yeah early punk, uh, uh lit, Iguess you could call it.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Tell us what you know what is.
What does goethe mean to youand how did he fit into the
subversive orthodoxy world andlike, how is he?
I mean that question, but alsojust what does he really mean to
you, or is he just more of a?
He helped invent the Westernliterature, canon.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
He's recognized, you know, as a genius and a world
historical figure, but nobodyreally knows exactly why, other
than that he wrote Faust and hehad a hit coming out of the box
with the Sorrows of YoungWerther.
But he is credited with notthat he invented world
(21:14):
literature, although that's partof it.
But during this period of time,with the growth of the
Enlightenment and the rise ofscience and rationality,
literature had to kind ofredefine itself as something
other than just stories aboutrationality.
(21:37):
You know stories about, likeSamuel Johnson's Rasselas, you
know stoic stories about livinga rational, good life, and for
Goethe it was well.
No, the novel is more ambitiousthan that.
It deals with inner experiencein an external world that
(22:03):
doesn't fit the inner experience.
Modernity is a kind ofalienation from the old world.
And the novels the very firstnovel, the celebrated novel Don
Quixote, is a story of a guywhose values don't fit the new
(22:24):
commercial world.
He wants to be a knight and benoble, and the new commercial
world is sort of based onrationality and emerging
capitalism.
And so there's this clashbetween the inner life and the
external circumstances.
And so how do you navigate that?
(22:45):
Well, you can create adelusional world of your own
internal imagination and livelike a knight against all of the
new values.
But there you run the danger ofeither being thought of as
crazy.
You run the danger of eitherbeing thought of as crazy or you
(23:08):
just end up being thiseccentric that doesn't fit in,
or you could just deny yourinternal experience and conform
to the new economic social order.
But then there's this internalalienation where you feel that
you're unreal and unexpressed.
Or with Goethe, you can writethe novel of self-development,
(23:32):
what he called the Biltroman,the novel of development, where
you make a character who's inconflict with his world and try
to work out the psychologicalsocial realities by articulating
(23:53):
his subjective experience.
Is that what Faust is?
That's what Faust is and that'swhat Goethe is, and that's what
his Beltungsroman Meister'sApprentice, I think, is how it's
translated in English of a guywho's trying to find how he can
(24:18):
relate his inner life to theexternal modern world, inner
life to the external modernworld, and he decides, kind of
like Goethe, to use art andliterature and theater as a way
of helping mediate the externalforces and his internal needs
(24:40):
and desires and experience.
And so that is the beginning ofthe modern novel, because most
modern novels, or most novels,all novels, are kind of epics of
homelessness.
They're not the great Greekepics of external triumph,
(25:04):
they're stories about people whodon't necessarily fit into the
status quo and struggle to findtheir place and their meaning in
spite of that.
And Goethe's novels ofself-development, like Sor of
Young Berthier and like Faust,try to describe what are the
(25:29):
psychological stages and crisesthat evolve from that.
So in a world where therewasn't any psychology yet, where
there wasn't any therapy, therewasn't any psychotherapy.
There was at best spiritualcounseling if you were lucky, or
(25:49):
a knowledgeable uncle, like inSorrows of Young Werther, where
his uncle is kind of a careercounselor who doesn't really
understand the inner life ofWerther, merely his external
circumstances, and so the novelbecomes a way of exploring these
(26:13):
psychological dynamics.
And for Goethe, you know Goethewas brilliant enough of a
person that impressed Nietzschewith his introspection, and
Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, I mean that's pretty.
Good audiences yeah, it's kindof a big deal.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, I don't like.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
You're Nietzsche and Napoleon's favorite writer.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah.
And so he probes thesepsychological and internal
crises, like in Werther, wherehe has a sympathy for people who
love people that don't lovethem back, or in the Wilhelm
(27:05):
Meister's Apprentice he has asympathy for artists whose work
is not understood and who aretrying to navigate the new world
that understands new thingsabout optics, but maybe not so
much new things about the innerlife, because the inner life
(27:28):
doesn't quite fit with the newworld of optics as it did before
.
Right, yeah.
So literature, world literaturebecomes, you know, as the whole
world undergoes these kinds oftransitions into the modern.
He was fascinated by that, andso he wrote Faust, Part One,
(27:52):
which is about a midlife crisisin the face of a guy who spent
his whole life seeking knowledgeand power and coming up with
nothing at midlife.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Before we go into Faust though, because I know
we're going to spend some timeon Faust, for sure but one thing
that I'm learning about Goethe,and you keep mentioning him in
this context of literature, butI think what he was trying to do
was way beyond literature.
He was like trying to speak tohis culture that, um, as they
(28:34):
were, as they were becoming I'mtrying to articulate the words
as they were becoming.
You know the old world, the,the older generation inverter.
You know being being stoic andcapitalistic and having all the
answers of.
You know the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Thinking they can make life mechanistic.
It seems that in every way,goethe held everything together
in tension rather than havingall the answers.
As I look at his whole work, itseems that it seems that his
genius was, as a polymath, wasthe ability to hold a bunch of
(29:14):
things together.
Um, he had a unique concept ofevil that it wasn't static but
it was dynamic and it was likeevolving and it was bouncing off
of the character, like in Faust.
We'll get to that that he wasalso saying that science and art
and mysticism are not separatethings.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
They can all be integrated, which no one from
the Enlightenment would havethought that, other than William
Blake maybe, and they thoughthe was crazy, right.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, and then just bringing in that punk rock
reality of tragedy and death andsuicide.
That was something from yourbook.
I want to read this.
This is like if somebody askedme why should you care about
Blake?
I think I mean not Blake.
I'm sorry, goethe, blake.
I think that I mean not Blake,I'm sorry, gerta.
(30:09):
That it would be kind of.
This is one of the concepts thatI think is pretty, pretty
special about him.
That is kind of like theanti-Disney concept.
It says, uh, it's coming off ofsome of the stuff from Faust,
but it says what is remarkablehere is that Gerta's insight
into the spiritual tragediesinherent both to the romantic
movement represented by verterand to the scientific
(30:32):
technological wager representedby faust.
These two sides of the modernpsyche, its idealistic youthful
longings for total personalfulfillment and its cynical
midlife thirst for power, serveas two sides of the same
cautionary tale.
The sorrows of young Wertherwarns us not to confuse our
desire for reality.
(30:53):
However authentic they may feel, our dreams can never be
fulfilled because they are asymptom of a deeper longing, not
of this world.
That's very anti-Disney rightthere.
I'm going to read it again Amen.
Our dreams can never befulfilled because they are a
symptom of a deeper longing, notof this world.
(31:14):
Wow, while Faust warns us that,no matter how much power we
have, no matter how infinite ourresources, god's providence
remains a mystery to our naturalselves, these essentially
religious ideas are more thanmoral.
They are ontological assertionsand existential assumptions
born of a religious worldviewthat can neither that could be
(31:37):
neither proven nor refuted bythe scientific method.
Hence their power has anenduring critique, and I put in
the side notes that paragraph isan anti-disney narrative.
What disney leaves out?
The world's tales fall short toultimate fulfillment and
happiness.
Only with the deeper longingscan we find our true grounding.
(32:00):
Um, and and I randomly I don'tknow if it was, I don't know if
it was in relation to somethingI was watching for Subversive
Orthodoxy or what, but somebody,oh, I think it was just a
general critique of the new SnowWhite, snow White movie.
Maybe it was something you sentme, I can't remember what it
was, but something was sayingthat the original Snow White
(32:24):
came from Grimm's fairy tales.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
That's right had.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
It had a lot of depth to it, it had spiritual depth
to it and, um, it had grit, andthen it was reduced to a woman
who needed to get kissed by aprince in order to you know, it
got, it got super reduced intothis like one-dimensional, no
conflict.
No, you know, not really just abad, just a villain that does,
(32:49):
you know, tries to prevent love,or something yes but it seems
that they they said they werecritiquing disney in general
saying that they strip.
They strip fairy tales and mythsfrom their, their essential
truth, which is the opposite.
You know, it's the exact workthat, uh, that gert is doing in
(33:13):
faust is not stripping it of itsgrit and that's the same as the
um, the storm and stressmovement was to say we're not
gonna sugarcoat life, let'sactually face it yeah well,
that's, that's that analogy isgreat let's put aside rainbows
(33:34):
and unicorns yeah and actuallylook at this person who
committed suicide.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah and uh, that it was not
something that rarely or neverhappened in the human condition.
You know, this is interesting.
I'm going to go a little bit ofa tangent here.
(34:01):
It reminds me, I think I toldyou I watched some of the
YouTube analyses of book reviewsof Faust and I think most of
them the ones I saw weredisappointed in this Faust.
(34:22):
Especially, they couldn't readpart two at all and they were
really disappointed at theChristian dimension of the end
of Faust where there wassalvation of grace and
redemption as being kind of acop-out Christian sort of easy
(34:47):
answer to a difficult problem.
And having not read part twowhich most of or if they even
read part two, they just said itwas unreadable.
Because part two is where allthe heavy lifting comes in.
As to how you reconcile thisdark reality of evil with a
(35:15):
divine creation is played outwas too difficult, or it
required such a differentsensibility than our sensibility
that they couldn't quite getwhat was really happening at the
(35:35):
end and so just dismissed it.
And it kind of reminded me of,like Dante's Divine Comedy.
Everybody reads the Inferno,but nobody reads the Purgatorio
or the Paradiso sections,because that's where the
(36:00):
religious sensibility kicks inin terms of its relationship to
all of the evil that isdescribed in the Inferno.
And it's the same with Faust.
It's like everybody's okay aslong as Faust is committing his
(36:21):
sort of horrendous crimes withHanging out with the devil, sort
of horrendous crimes withhanging out with the devil.
That all makes kind of punkysense.
But when the wheel starts toturn and Faust realizes that the
devil doesn't have all theanswers, that their interest
(36:45):
begins to fade a little, thatit's moving in a different
direction.
And then, since part two is thereconciliation of Faust and the
redemption of Mephistopheles,which is something that is
almost incomprehensible in amodern setting.
(37:07):
They kind of lose attention orlose focus and say there's
nothing happening, rather thanreally feel challenged by Part 2
, which wasn't published inGoethe's lifetime.
It was only after his deaththat Part 2 was published.
Gerda's lifetime it was onlyafter his death that part two
(37:32):
was published.
So at the beginning of Dante'sInferno, you probably remember
there's a message written overthe entrance to the Inferno or
hell, abandon all hope.
Ye who enter here.
You're familiar with that.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I thought that was from Pirates of the Caribbean,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Well, yeah.
I think they made it a littleless extreme, but anyway they
didn't have the whole printing.
It's Abandon all hope ye whoenter here.
And then underneath it it saysI too was created by eternal
(38:17):
love.
Now that's the kicker.
I can get.
Abandon all hope ye.
He end all hair.
But I too was created byeternal love yeah where is that
coming from right?
(38:38):
yeah, and part two of Faust iswhen Mephistopheles is is
redeemed.
That that is.
That is the kicker in that, andbecause it it follows from all
(39:02):
the crazy stuff that happens inpart two, but not logically.
You know, it was sort of likeyou were saying in your summary.
You know it requires thisontological leap into a
religious reality.
It's almost kind of like whenKierkegaard talks about Abraham
(39:23):
and Isaac.
You know the willingness tokill his son becomes a religious
act that leads to his son'ssalvation.
It just seems so wrong to amodern sensibility and yet it's
(39:45):
asking for a, a leap of faith.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Uh, that is that that um gerta is trying to sort of
work out in part two of faust ifyou can elevate out of your
literature brain, yeah, andthink like why does someone care
about Goethe today?
Okay, what does he bring to themodern person that's not
(40:12):
necessarily focused onliterature, because I do think
there's stuff there.
Okay, I'd just like to hear itfrom you Outside of literature.
What do you think it is?
What is his contribution?
Speaker 1 (40:29):
it is.
What is this contribution?
Well, this contribution is apsychological appropriation of
Christianity and enlightenment,the complex conversation between
Christianity and theenlightenment, between the
secular worship of power andknowledge versus the interior
desire for God and love and alarger connection to the
(40:55):
universe, to nature and creationand to other people that is not
mediated by knowledge and power.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
And so he sort of through literature, he kind of
stepped in and grabbed the twoand held them together rather
than letting them split apart.
Similar, similar to blakeexactly, yeah it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It's like the.
This is what elliot called thedisassociation of sensibility.
The inner life and the outerlife are separated now and we
worship the outer life and theouter life are separated now and
we worship the outer life, andthe inner life is ruled by whim
and advertising andmanipulations, have you?
Speaker 2 (41:35):
said that.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
I said that.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Oh, I thought you were just quoting someone no.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
And so the literature that tried to bridge that gap I
mean it already existed.
In Don Quixote there was asense where you could go back
and find, at the beginning ofmodernity, stories about trying
to bridge the gap between theinner and outer worlds that were
(42:02):
.
Now, every generation has adifferent outer world, but it
has the same inner world, theinner world of longing for
meaning and love andsignificance.
But the rules of the game thatthey were taught when they were
10 aren't in operation by thetime they're 16 or 18, or even
by the time they're 21.
So we have these coming-of-agestories that, in our pop culture
(42:29):
, are about the first time youhad sex, rather than the real
coming-of-age story that Goethetold about.
How do you come to grips with aworld that doesn't even
acknowledge your inner life oryour desire for the transcendent
?
That's the real question.
That coming of age is not justlosing your virginity and
(42:51):
getting your driver's license.
That coming of age is whereyou're initiated into a culture
that takes seriously your innerlongings for significance,
meaning longings forsignificance, meaning love,
(43:13):
community, and that's the realcoming-of-age story.
And when in Werther, we'retalking about coming of age in
1778, right, you know the verybeginning of a modern world and
those values are under attack bythe old establishment that
(43:33):
wasn't ready for the AmericanRevolution or for the liberty
for all or, you know, peoplefalling in love and not giving
in to arranged marriages, and sothat was.
(43:54):
So.
He represented sort of theyouthful coming of age, the
alienated hip person, werther,who wanted to follow the
dictates of his inner life andnot that of the world that wasn
(44:15):
arranging their own money andpower and ownership of things,
and even arranging marriagesthat weren't true to what people
(44:36):
were feeling.
And so he tells that story andmakes it a tragedy of sorts of a
person that wanted to remaintrue to the inner life but found
it in impossible conflict withthe world he was in.
And that became a bestsellerand you could see how that was
(44:57):
kind of like the first rebelwithout a cause.
Now, with Faust, it's moremidlife crisis.
Now, with Faust, it's moremidlife crisis.
I spent my whole life servingmoney and power and knowledge.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
He got to the height.
People may not know anythingabout Faust.
Yeah, faust tells a story.
It's a two-part play.
Right In the first part, faustis visited by a uh devil sort of
character yeah calledmephistopheles and he the.
(45:33):
What I learned is you know, Ihaven't read it myself- yet um,
but I learned he made a wagerand the wager is not what you
typically would think he's notsaying.
He's not saying like do thismoral thing or immoral thing or
I will take your soul.
He's saying um you, I will giveyou, I will assist you on doing
everything and anything youwant to the point of total
(45:58):
fulfillment, and the wager islike if you actually ever get
satisfied, then I get your soul,or something is.
Is that right?
Yeah, yes, that's right, thatum uh exploring like constant
striving for your whole life,for knowledge and beauty and
meaning.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Right.
And uh, uh, Faust takes the umwager because he can't imagine
being contented ever, that thatlife is just constant, uh,
unfolding of new desire, afternew desire, after new desire.
So why would I ever think thatI would ever be contented or at
(46:36):
peace?
I think in the Faust um there'sa line in a famous line where
if, if you ever say the words,um, I am contented, let this
last forever, I get your soul.
Yeah, and so faust is knowshimself as well as he can that
(47:05):
this is never going to happenfor him.
So it really isn't a deal withthe devil in his mind.
It's just sort of well, thedevil isn't as bad as people
think, in the sense of he'sgoing to just keep me striving,
and that's all I ever reallywant to do is strive and have
new desires.
So you know what's there tolose.
So you know what's there tolose Because I don't have an
(47:27):
experience of my soul yet, oryou know.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Or what I think of as my soul is this striving part
of me, and even before he makesthe wager right, is he already
at the height of scholarship?
What's the word Scholasticism?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Well, scholarship, yeah yeah, he's at the height of
his career.
He's at.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Before the wager right Before the wager.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
He is sort of a guy who spent his whole life seeking
knowledge and power and ithasn't really paid off the way
he thought.
So this is an important part ofthe story.
So he decides that he's goingto commit suicide because all of
(48:20):
this power and knowledge,however much he's been able to
obtain, doesn't strike him assatisfying or enough.
And he's in this little dustylab with Wagner, his lab
assistant, and he never married,he never had family or anything
(48:42):
, and so he decides he's goingto kill himself.
And then he, before he can dothat, he's disturbed by music
coming from the village, andit's described as Easter music
because it's part of the Eastercelebration.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
It's.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Easter week right now .
Speaker 1 (49:06):
And it's Easter week.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Holy week.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
So it's interesting, the Werder meets Latte on spring
break and Faust is pulled outof his suicide by the Easter
music of the celebration in thevillage of Easter week.
So he goes outside to seewhat's up and he gets outside
(49:35):
his normal mind that ispreoccupied with power and money
, and he has a beer with thelocal laborers and he dances
with a peasant girl and heenters into ordinary life and
(50:04):
discovers you know, this isprobably what I've been missing
is actual life with human beings.
And so he comes back to his laband decides he's going to
retranslate the Gospel of Johnso that it doesn't begin with in
the beginning was the word, butin the beginning was the act.
So now he's on like a secondphase of his life, to enter into
(50:29):
life.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
And what happens is Life is action rather than
knowledge.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Yes, life is action rather than knowledge.
But it's sort of like if he hadbeen into action he probably
would have discovered that it'salso knowledge, right?
So it's sort of like, whateveryou're dealing with in your
first half of your life, you seethrough at middle age and now
(50:59):
you have to develop the otherside of yourself.
And that's a Goethean motif isthe novel of development.
It's like you go too far in onedirection and then life brings
you up short and then opens upthe other side.
(51:20):
So now he's going to enter intothe other side.
But what he doesn't realize isthat a black poodle snuck in
when he was coming back from thefestival, the Easter festival,
(51:51):
and that black poodle wasMephistopheles, or the devil, or
a demon.
A servant of the devil hadsnuck into his lab, and so he
finds the dog hiding behind thestove and he uses one of his,
and he uses one of his potionsthat he's developed in his lab,
where he can make anybody tellthe truth.
(52:13):
It's a truth-telling potion.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
So he compels Mephistopheles to reveal it
Because Faust was a scholar andalso an alchemist.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Yes, yes.
And so he compels the dog tosay who he is.
So the dog transforms intoMephistopheles and
Mephistopheles says and thisrelates to what we said about
Dante's Inferno we said aboutDante's Inferno, you know, with
(52:55):
the subtitle I also was createdby eternal love.
Who are you?
And Mephistopheles says I ampart of that force in the
universe that always wells,always wells evil, but only
produces good.
Now, that's another one ofthose religious leaps of faith,
(53:19):
like what?
That's sort of like the paradoxof the fortunate fall right that
Adam and Eve's sin in thegarden doomed us to a life of
(53:40):
sin, but it also made itpossible for us to be redeemed,
and also made possible grace ina Eden that was unaware of its
(54:13):
own beauty, truth and justice.
So it put humanity on the road,for it put humanity on the road
for self-discovery andself-creation, or one could call
(54:35):
it a educational journey intofathoming the true nature of
grace that was beyond simply theacquisition of power and
knowledge.
And so that's kind of wherepart one ends, where Faust is
(55:01):
able to get everything he wants,or everything he thinks he
wants.
So he gets his youth back, hegets to seduce Gretchen, he gets
all the money he wants, he getsall the power he wants, he gets
everything that he thinks hewanted.
But then Gretchen ends uppregnant, killing her baby, then
(55:31):
killing herself, and beingcondemned to hell.
And he realizes that he didn'twant, that he didn't want the
collateral damage that came withhaving everything he wanted,
that came with having everythinghe wanted.
(55:51):
And so he looks toMephistopheles to sort of right
the wrong.
And Mephistopheles said well, Ididn't promise you happiness, I
only promised you power andknowledge, which is what you
said you wanted.
And if you ever get happiness,then I get your soul, because
you never wanted happiness, youthought happiness was impossible
(56:12):
.
And now Gretchen is safelywithin my clutches in hell.
And so, uh, you know, are youresponsible for that or not?
And then Gretchen repents ofher sins and is redeemed by God.
(56:36):
So, mephistopheles.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
After her death.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Before her death, oh, her death.
So when she dies because she's,I don't know whether she
actually commits suicide orwhether she's executed, but
right when she is trying to killherself or dies, the devil I
(57:06):
don't know whether it'sMephistopheles or the actual
devil says uh, now she's mine,oh, so she was.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
She was sentenced to be beheaded for infanticide.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
Okay, so, so right before she's beheaded, uh, the
devil says, uh, she's mine.
And then God opens up theheavens and says no, she's
forgiven.
Now this divine intervention issomething that modern readers
(57:41):
find cheesy, but they haven'tread part two and they don't
know how Grace operates in theGertian story.
He's not really offering acheap grace at the end of
Gretchen's life.
He's putting it into a cosmiccontext that Faust himself does
(58:08):
not yet understand.
So Faust goes back to his orgyat the Walpurgisburg party with
mixed emotions, because this waswhat he said he wanted, and yet
(58:31):
this he didn't realize, thatGretchen would pay the price.
But did Gretchen pay the price,or was she really?
It sounds as if God saved her.
Why would he save her?
It doesn't quite make sense tome.
So you know, I've made my wager.
(59:06):
So spiritual plane because it'snot as realistic a story of a
person who has sold his soul tothe devil and now is seeing the
consequences it's more of.
(59:27):
He enters into the spiritualworld of Mephistopheles, which
is this imaginative world wherehe can go and do anything he
wants, and so he decides thathe's going to go back and make
love to Helen of Troy and haveall of the kingdoms of the world
(59:53):
, as well as the love of themost beautiful woman in history.
And so it plays out as thiskind of plays out as this kind
(01:00:16):
of dream, visionary fantasy, inwhich a lot of the internal
spiritual and psychologicalsteps, after the fact of having
seen the consequences of yourfulfilling your desires on other
people, what they are on otherpeople, become reality for him
and what it takes for him toturn around and give his soul to
(01:00:38):
God at the end.
And so that's the more probablythat's the Purgatoria and
Paradiso sections of Faust that,like most people who read
buying comedy, don't readbecause they think they already
(01:01:03):
know that story.
But it's not the story theythink they know.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah, obviously Goethe is using his imagination
big time.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
This is not your normal Bible story, Right right
and it's kind of a dreamscenario.
It's kind of like it's a kindof a dream scenario.
It's kind of like I I wouldhave, I think in my rigid
evangelical mindset I would havebeen like, oh, this is just
weird and this is just.
You know, maybe it's not maybeeven borderline demonic and not
(01:01:37):
orthodox at all.
But what I think a guy likegerta or blake are doing is
actually exploring, for onething.
Exploring they're thinking,thinking out loud through their
literature, what I, what I've,what I've learned from.
About faust it sounds likealmost like goethe's imaginary
(01:02:00):
autobiography of exploring hisown mind and desires exactly I,
I agree, totally, totally and sotherefore like, and you're
saying, you're saying that hekind of created that genre of
having um, what do you call it,where you're writing about a
life development?
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
uh, active imagination, uh, you call it the
build on, build on roman orwhatever.
Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Build on roman?
Yeah, that yeah, the vibe of uh, yeah the story of uh spiritual
development so to, so to gertzput this brick down, and then is
that what um or he, he moldedthis brick, called that, and
then did he basically inspire aguy like dostoevsky to then take
(01:02:46):
that and build it with like 10bricks and tell the story of a
whole family.
Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Yes, yes, I think that that's exactly what happens
.
Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
So Dostoevsky was influenced, you would think.
Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Or obviously Goethe at some point.
But I'm sure there's culturaldifferences, because the
Russians and the Germans are notknown for their familiarity or
(01:03:18):
their love of each other'sculture, although Goethe's Faust
became an opera and made itsway to Russia, and Russians love
opera and so the story was notlost on.
Him takes literary realism,which is that idea of telling
(01:03:59):
the truth about social andpsychological experience as well
as spiritual aspirations, andbrings them together in his
novels, so that you have thisnovel of development that tries
to describe the redemption ofsome pretty dark characters, and
usually what happens is hedoesn't succeed.
And so for the first I wouldsay, like Crime and Punishment
(01:04:22):
and the Idiot and the Demons,the Possessed you mean the
possessed he tried to show likethe redemption of a terrorist or
the redemption of a in theidiot, a redemption of a sort of
a person that was not really aperson, who was like a perfect
(01:04:47):
Christian from his idea of aperfect Christian and not a real
redeemed Christian, because hecouldn't imagine how that person
would become a real.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Christian.
Are you talking about the idiot?
Yeah, the idiot.
That's what the idiot's about.
Yeah, it's about that's cool.
Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Yeah the idiot, yeah the idiot.
That's what the idiot's about.
Yeah, it's about cool, yeah so,but all of his books you know
they like in uh and crime.
Let's take crime and punishment.
It's a good example um wait, Ihave a.
I have a quote right now or nota quote, but like a comment on
that.
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I found um, which is interesting because we're going
to be talking about Dostoevskyat some point, there'll be an
episode of just him, but it sayshere's how the Dostoevsky and
Goethe relate.
It says for Dostoevsky, theworks of Goethe, werther and
Faust were simply proofs of thewrong way the West had taken.
(01:05:40):
Dostoevsky would use Goethe'sdepravity of characters to
create a Faustian context forhis novella the Possessed,
including that of characterdescription, which also relates
to literary time.
Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Yeah, right, and that's world literature, right.
Yeah, the Russian takes fromthe German but improves it from
his point of view, improves itfrom his point of view.
But you know Dostoevsky, andwe'll just go here because I
think it's important for asubversive orthodoxy Dostoevsky
(01:06:17):
is kind of like Beethoven in away where he had a larger vision
of the kind of music he wantedto make or the kind of novels he
wanted to make, or the kind ofnovels he wanted to write the
redemption of a would-beterrorist, or the example of a
(01:06:39):
perfect Christian.
Or the one book he never livedlong enough to write was the
Life of a Sinner.
I think it was Life of aRedeemed Sinner or something
like that, about himselfactually.
Well, they were all kind ofabout himself and he never felt
(01:07:00):
that he really nailed it, reallynailed it.
They were kind of likeunfinished masterpieces or
partial masterpieces wherepeople.
You know, it would be great ifRaskolnikov, actually, you know,
found redemption at the end ofCrime and Punishment and there
(01:07:23):
is a kind of a redemption at theend, but Dostoevsky didn't
think he ever really nailed it,that it wasn't realistic enough,
that it didn't seem like thatwould really happen, and so by
his own standards, these werelike they say about
(01:07:47):
Shakespeare's plays, you know,they start great and the
characters are wonderful, butthen he doesn't know how to end
them, so he just has everybodyget killed off or he has, you
know, a happy ending Did theysay that about Shakespeare.
Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Yeah, I'm not that well read.
(01:08:21):
And one brother is going toexemplify the reconciliation of
an ordinary person to God inlight of the psychology of the
underground which governs humanstriving Faustian striving right
, um, and he and the what wehave as brothers karamazov,
(01:08:55):
which is his last novel, is whathe considers his masterpiece.
Uh, that brought it, that thatbrought it together, that that
finally did.
What he always wanted to do isget all the pieces in place the
contrast between the person whois too much in his head versus
the person who's too much in hissexual passions, versus the
(01:09:17):
person who is trying toreconcile himself with God and
succeeds.
And that's part one and parttwo.
He never lived to write whichwas going to be about the same
brothers 20 years later becausethey're in their 20s in brothers
(01:09:40):
karamazov.
But brothers karamazov was goingto have part two in which he
showed them 20 years down theline and that's kind of similar
to Goethe.
You know, you start withSorrows of Young Bertha, 20s,
and then you end in the midlifecrisis of Faust and probably in
(01:10:01):
his 40s or 50s, and there's thatsame thing going on with
Dostoevsky.
But the great thing aboutBrothers Karamazov, part 1, is
there are older characters inPart 1 that have navigated that
midlife crisis.
So you really don't really needPart 2, because you kind of
(01:10:25):
have it all in part one andthat'll be fun to look at.
But the fact that, like Goethe,you're writing that novels are
not like clever stories aboutguys who tried to make it in
business and failed or fell inlove or something.
(01:10:47):
They're really about how youreconcile the inner life to the
outer life, and every generationneeds its novelists from
Goethe's point of view to talkabout the new world.
You're navigating right, and sothis is kind of in Werther.
(01:11:08):
Werther is sort of navigatingwhat it would be like to come of
age in 1778, a new world that'smoving toward democracy but
hasn't caught up to itself yet,which is every generation right.
You're coming of age in a worldthat's already obsolete and you
(01:11:31):
were kind of trained for theobsolete world.
But there's a new world on thehorizon.
How do you navigate that?
Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Well, you can't just navigate that in a quest for
power and knowledge, or you'regoing to end up on obsolete
knowledge an obsolete little guyin his you know, uh, lab, uh,
without any connection to reallife that's so relevant now
(01:12:01):
because I feel like the thecoming of age from 10 years to
10 years now is way more rapidlyaccelerating oh yeah, two years
social media and um socialmedia, digital media, ai and all
that oh, yeah, yeah just fromjust from our, just from my age
I'm in my 40s to a 20 year old,right now my son's 18, our
(01:12:25):
worlds are completely differentin how they're paced and how
people relate.
Yeah, so to write, to writesomething now, or just, not even
just for literature, but justfor the sake of understanding
your culture now, with 10 yeariterations, is insane compared
to their generations, was youknow, probably?
(01:12:47):
Things were changing a lot over50 years, that's right.
And now things are changing alot over two to five years,
that's right.
I don't know what to do withthat.
Well, well how Gerda speaksinto that.
Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Well, the the good news is the inner life isn't
really changed.
Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Yeah, there's still the desire for meaning, love,
connection, community, god.
All those transcended desiresare as fresh with every
generation, are as fresh withevery generation.
It's just that they meet upwith different sources of
(01:13:38):
resistance or misinterpretations, or they themselves have it
harder to understand themselvesif they don't have a writer or a
spiritual director or somebodythat can mirror for them the
spiritual world that they wantto bring.
One of the writers that is kindof a contemporary Goethe in
(01:14:02):
terms of writing Beldung'sRomans was Herman Hesse, who won
the Nobel Prize in 1927, Ithink.
Development that were about ayoung idealistic character and
the social forces allied againsthim that were really trying to
(01:14:37):
direct him toward knowledge andpower, not truth and faith and
faith.
And so they were all sort oflike Siddhartha.
His famous story about theBeldungsroman of the Buddha
(01:14:57):
tries to divide the Buddha'sdevelopment into sort of
universal stages, stages of howyou transform from a seeker to a
finder, from someone who islooking for the truth in a world
that doesn't seem to provide itto someone who sees the truth
(01:15:18):
at a more transcendent level.
And in one of the front piecesof one of the Hesse's novels is
the little quote from Hesse, andit's I only tried to live in
accordance with the promptingsof my own heart.
(01:15:39):
Why was that so difficult?
Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
And that's classic Goethe right, did you say that
again?
Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
I only try to live according to the promptings of
my own heart.
Why was that so difficult?
And so the stories are about whyit's hard to live according to
the promptings of your own heart, about why it's hard to live
according to the promptings ofyour own heart, and in the
(01:16:15):
Sorrows of Young Bertha it'ssort of like well, because you
have this transcendent idealismthat doesn't fit your
compromised world and thatdoesn't make you defective but
that does make you unrealistic,basically.
(01:16:37):
And after Werder came out andbecame really popular and
everybody was dressing likeWerther, but also it caused a
lot of suicides, actually ofyoung people copying Werther.
(01:16:59):
What do you make of that?
Well, goethe wrote later aboutthat and he said wrote later
about that.
And he said you know, I thoughtthat for me Goethe was the
person I had to get rid of.
Werther was the part of me, theyoung, idealistic, romantic,
(01:17:20):
that I had to get rid of so thatI could get on with the serious
work of writing Faust.
And so, although I don't thinkhe mentions Faust, but that's
sort of what ended up being wasthat he had to mature out of
(01:17:43):
that youthful rebellion, thatrebel without a cause, into an
adult with a purpose.
And he couldn't do that untilhe got all those feelings and
all those confusions and angerand feeling of displacement and
(01:18:07):
resentment at the world thatmade it impossible for him to
have the woman that he loved outon the page.
And then, once for him, he gotit out on the page.
It was kind of cathartic, butit didn't turn out to be
cathartic for a lot of the youngpeople that read him and that
(01:18:27):
caused him a lot of.
Actually, it didn't cause himas much pain and self-doubt as
it would have caused me or youprobably.
But he was enough of aristocratto say well, gee, I'm not
(01:18:53):
responsible for the fact thatpeople don't know how to read
novels, they're not.
That novel is not a model onhow to live, it's a warning on
how not to live.
Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
And so that's why he just attributed it to people's
stupidity.
Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
Yeah, ignorance.
That's why Hesse puts a littlepreface to his Bildungsroman.
I only tried to live inaccordance with my own heart.
Why was that so difficultTelling you what the novel is
going to be about?
It's going to be about thisstruggle with being true to your
(01:19:30):
heart.
In an alien environment or aworld that's so rapidly changing
, it's hard to find your contextand your place in it, and that
this isn't your fault and itisn't something that you should
beat yourself up over, butsomething that should invite you
to a more transcendent faithand an order that transcends
(01:19:54):
this world.
And how you can kind of intuitthat or see it in operation.
That's kind of how Fowl's partone and part two work.
That's kind of how Faust PartOne and Part Two work.
But if you just read Part One,you know you only get half the
story.
And if you just read the Demonsor Crime and Punishment, you
(01:20:20):
sort of get, you know, a verypowerful critique of human
psychology, but you don't getDostoevsky's sort of mature
spiritual response to.
Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
A redemptive vision.
Speaker 1 (01:20:41):
The redemptive vision as strongly or as persuasively
as he thought he did in theBrothers Karamazov.
Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
Do you think Goethe was preaching at the end of
Faust or do you think he didn'tknow how else to take it because
that was his worldview?
Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Well, that's a really good question, because I think
he was demonstrating… he wasproclaiming something is a kind
of Greek tragedy about themodern myth of the pursuit of
(01:21:31):
power and knowledge as theultimate end of human existence.
Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
Which it bankrupts in part one.
Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
Yes, it bankrupts in part one and in part two he
(01:22:04):
offers sort of like a new genreof fantasy and dream scenario
epic redemption that's takingplace inside his psyche and soul
rather than out in the world ofof power and knowledge.
Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
It's sort of like A psychedelic redemptive fantasy A
psychedelic, yeah, psychedelicredemption.
No, that as a category, thatwould be a whole new thing.
Psychedelic redemptive fantasy.
Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
Yeah, before 1968.
Well before 1968.
Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
And that concludes this episode.
I think there may be somethingin here for all of you, each of
you whether you're a skeptic, abeliever or somewhere in between
on your own deconstructionjourney, we're going to be
exploring what it means to livea life of deep meaning in a
world that often feelsfragmented and nihilistic, and
this revelatory faith doesn'tseem to come to us from the
(01:23:10):
expected places.
The prophetic voice doesn'tseem to come from the pulpits or
the seminaries.
It's breaking through in novels, poetry, activism, art and the
unexpected corners of culture.
We hope you'll join us on thisongoing conversation.
Until then, thank you forlistening to the Subversive
(01:23:31):
Orthodoxy Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
If you found this meaningful, please leave a
five-star review subscribe andshare with anyone who might
(01:23:57):
resonate with this conversation.
Adios.
This has been a SubversiveOrthodoxy podcast with Travis
Mullen and Professor Inchosti,or, if I could drift through it,
dancing through moonlight undernighttime skies, forgetting the
world's lies.
Meanwhile, I'm fine Lookingthrough a stained glass oceanic
scene.
Say hi to human beings with asmile unseen, grabbing
wildflowers as I slide downhills after a rain.
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